Two Doors

Paul awoke with a splitting headache. As he opened his eyes he was blinded by a bright, white light which only made his head pound more. He groaned and reached for a pillow to pull over his face. Unfortunately, no pillow was available because Paul was not in his bed.

As his eyes adjusted the the light, Paul was able to look around to get his bearings. He was sitting in a chair in the center of small, white room. Everything was unnaturally bright. The chair was fine.

A door opened. A deep, friendly voice asked, “So how are we feeling?”

Paul couldn’t see who was there, as they were standing behind him, but he answered all the same.

“It’s a little bright in here.”

“Oh, sorry about that. I don’t know why bright, white light is the default setting.”

The lights slowly came down as Paul’s guest (or host?) adjusted the dimmer switch on the wall.

“How’s that?”

“Much better,” Paul said in relief, “Could I get some water? Maybe an aspirin?”

“Of course,” the deep, friendly voice said, “Gabriel! A glass of water and an aspirin, please!”

A moment later, Paul was greeted by a short, plump man who offered two pills and a tall glass of ice cold water. Paul thanked the short, plump man and washed the aspirin down with two large gulps.

“Thank you, Gabriel, that will be all for now,” the deep, friendly voice said, “And are you feeling any better, Paul?”

“Much better.”

“Wonderful. Anyways, how’s being dead treating you?”

Paul blinked as his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light. Then he realized what he had just heard.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Being dead. How goes it so far?”

The owner of the deep, friendly voice walked around Paul’s chair until he was standing right in front of him. At least he thought it was a he. As his eyes adjusted it looked more like a woman. A tall, Indian woman. No, wait, it was a short, Spanish boy. Or was it a bear?

Paul was clearly disoriented. “Sorry, please don’t take offense to this, but what are you?”

“I get that all the time. I’m God. Allah. The Creator. Whatever you want to believe in or call me, I’m that.”

Paul’s eyes widened in shock. Was this a dream? A hallucination? Had he drank too much the night before? That would explain the headache, but this seemed too real to be the result of a drunken sleep.

Paul’s grip loosened on the empty water glass and it slipped from his hand. The glass shattered on the floor of the room.

“Shit, I’m sorry. Shit, sorry for saying shit. Shit!”

“It’s okay,” said God in a kind, forgiving tone, “don’t worry about the glass. I’ll clean that up later.”

Paul thought he must be losing his mind. Not because a man was claiming to be God, but because this man kept changing forms. Depending on which angle Paul saw him he would look like a woman, a child, a cat.

“Would you mind…um…”

“Is it the form changing?”

“It’s the form changing.”

“Yeah, I’ve been told it’s a little distracting.” God currently looked like a zebra from this angle. “But the truth is, every time I made a new thing down on Earth I would keep some of it’s form for myself as a souvenir. Contrary to what some have said, I really do love all of my creations.”

Paul stared blankly and tried to piece this all together.

“I’m sorry,” said God, “you must have a mountain of questions.”

“Yes.”

“Well first things first. You got into a car crash. Smashed straight into a telephone pole.”

“A car crash?” Paul remembered fighting with Vanessa. Something about him being too drunk at her sister’s birthday party. Did he try to drive? He couldn’t quite remember the details.

“How did it end?”

“To be honest, not great,” said God, who currently resembled a young Miles Davis, “ I mean, you’re here. How do you think it ended?”

Paul considered this and then realized it was probably a foolish question to begin with. Obviously it didn’t end well for him.

“How’s the car?”

Paul was immediately embarrassed.

“Not too bad, all things considered. Nothing a little body work can’t fix,” said God. “The interior’s ruined, though. Again, you’re here.”

“And where is here? Am I in heaven?”

“Well that’s to be determined.”

God stood up on her muscular moose legs and trotted over to the wall to Paul’s right. Paul hadn’t noticed them before, due to the bright, white light, but there were two doors along this wall. One said “Heaven” and the other said “Hell”.

“Which one, Paul?”

Paul’s brain had a hard time understanding the question. “Which one what?”

“Which door. Where do you think you should go?”

Paul had been a below average student as a kid. He often zoned out entirely in class, staring off into space. At least once a week a teacher would catch him and ask him a question. Paul, can you solve the equation? Paul, what year was that battle fought? Paul, read the next chapter aloud, please. He knew this trap all too well. The only correct answer was Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention and as a result I cannot give you an answer because I don’t even know what the question was.

“It’s not a trick question, Paul,” said God through a set of fish lips. “You know yourself better than anyone, so tell me where you think you should go.”

“Heaven?”

“Heaven? Is that a question? Are you asking me or are you telling me? Do you actually think you belong in Heaven?”

“I…uh…well…,” stammered Paul.

God inched his way closer and closer to the chair where Paul sat. His booming voice growing ever so slightly, just enough to be more loud than friendly.

“Paul, be honest with me. Can you do that? Can you be honest? Do you belong in Heaven?”

Paul was silent. His mind rattled through memories of his 34 years of life. Paul again flashed back to being a below average student. He knew all too well when the teacher had him trapped, backed against a corner, with the only exit being to give the answer he knew they wanted to hear.

Memories of his final day raced through his head. The birthday party. Getting way too drunk way too fast. Vanessa. Her disapproving looks that turned into trying to physically remove him from the party. Screaming at her in the driveway and finally wrestling the keys away from her to drive himself home, or more likely to his favorite bar.

“Hell,” Paul whispered.

“Speak up! What was that?”

“Hell. I belong in Hell.”

“And why is that, Paul? Why do you belong in Hell?” God was shouting so much that her talons were involuntarily scratching the floor. Her eyes rolled around independently of one another like an iguana. “It sounds like you have this pretty figured out, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Paul. “Yes, I know. I’m a shit person. I’ve always been a shit person. I hurt myself, I hurt the people I love, and I belong in Hell with the other miserable, irredeemable, shit people.”

God slowly clapped. The clap wasn’t very loud as wolf paws don’t resonate much when you whack them together, but the effect was still there.

“Well there we have it, I guess. You’re just some hateful, angry, twerp who finally got what was coming to him. You always thought you’d die alone and you know what? I’m glad you did! Taking somebody else out with you probably would have made you happy. Happier than you ever were in your whole miserable life. You thrive on the misery of others, don’t you? Well you’re in luck because you’ll be joining the most miserable people who ever walked the Earth! It’s an all you can eat buffet down there for a selfish, self-loathing man like you!”

Paul’s lip trembled. Being yelled at by God was like being yelled at by a teacher, but at least two or three times worse. At least. He was breathing quickly. Short, fast breaths. He could feel the blood rushing to his head. He could hear his heart pounding.

“Why did you make me this way?!” Paul yelled.

“Excuse me?” God got right up into Paul’s face.

“You made me, right? So why’d you make me such a fucking miserable shit!”

“You think I made you like this? You think I would make anyone like this? I made you all with the ability to make your own choices!”

Paul shook his head. “So were my choices part of some big plan? Is that it?”

“You think I have a plan? You think I’m sitting up here with some big ledger outlining every second of every day? And if I did, do you really think you’d be part of it? Who are you? Just some guy like the billions of others I created. That’s some arrogant talk there, Paul. And it really just points fingers in the wrong direction. You know who really deserves the blame for your behavior.”

Paul stayed silent. He felt he had nothing more to say. He had said his piece and was glad to have done it. “Fuck this,” he said and he stood up from the chair. God stared at him as he walked towards the two doors. Paul reached a hand out towards the knob on the Hell door.

“So that’s it then,” said God, antennae twitching atop his head.

“Yup, I guess so. If I’m an irredeemable shit then I guess I know my place,” Paul said and grabbed the doorknob.

“Who said you were irredeemable?”

“You did! You said I’m a shit person and I’ve always been a shit person and I thrive off of other people’s misery!”

“I didn’t say that, Paul. You did. Those thoughts came from you.”

Paul let go of the doorknob and turned around slowly to face God.

“I may have made people with the ability to make their own choices, but I never made them incapable of redemption. You can learn from mistakes if you choose to. I can’t make you choose to do that though, just like I can’t make you choose to do something bad in the first place. That’s all on you, but so is your own redemption.”

“So everyone can be redeemed?” Paul asked. “What about Hitler?”

God rolled his baby blue eyes. “Ugh, of course. These arguments always go back to Hitler. You know what, I’m not infallible. I can admit that. I’ll be honest, that whole Hitler thing? That was a real whoopsie-daisy moment for me. We all have whoopsie-daisies, Paul.”

“Hitler was a whoopsie-daisy? Bit of an understatement,” said Paul.

“My point is, if I wanted everything and everyone I created to be flawless and perfect I would have just made you all boring flesh robots down there. Instead I made you all flawed with the ability to do good as well as bad. Hitler is probably the best example of someone choosing to do bad, but he still had the potential to redeem himself. He made the choices to keep doing bad and when his mighty empire fell he chose to end his life rather than redeem himself. Can you imagine what a man with those kinds of resources and power could do if he chose to do good?”

Paul was confused. God was being very matter of fact about Hitler. He tried to imagine the alternate reality Hitler going around Germany raising money for charity or feeding the homeless.

“So Hitler’s in hell right?”

“Kind of, he works in the records department here.”

“You gave him a job?!”

“Not a good job. It’s basically just bureaucratic paper shuffling. The pile never gets any smaller though, business has been pretty steady for centuries now.” God chuckled. “Even Sisyphus is glad he doesn’t have that job! But it’s a good job for him to have. There’s lots of time for quiet reflection and I believe that he’ll eventually come to a point where redemption is possible.”

“Am I supposed to feel good about Hitler being redeemed?”

“Hey, if that guy is redeemable surely you are too. That’s comforting, isn’t it?”

Paul’s mind went back to his last day on Earth. The fight, the drinking, the crash. He thought about Vanessa but this time in a way he hadn’t before. He saw the same fights, the same issues with their relationship through her eyes. He saw a scared person. A person scared of the man she was with and simultaneously scared for him. He saw himself the way she saw him, he saw the flaws he had ignored while he was alive.

“I don’t want to be that anymore,” said Paul.

“Don’t want to be what?” asked God.

“That miserable shit.”

“That’s the first step to redemption, Paul. Although I wouldn’t use those exact words but you pretty much nailed it. The process of redemption isn’t easy but the first step is. You just have to want it.”

Paul did want it. His eyes misted over. He looked down at his feet and tried to hide the single tear that was rolling down his cheek. God said nothing as he stood up on his haunches and took a small hooved step closer to Paul. He extended a hand towards the Heaven door. Paul looked up, his eyes meeting God’s. Both of them had tears in their eyes as God nodded and motioned towards the door again. Paul nodded back. He turned and reached for Heaven’s doorknob.

As Paul stepped through the doorway he felt like a weight had been lifted from him. Like he’d had a rock strapped to his chest for so long that he forgot it was there, and now that it was gone he finally realized how heavy it was. He walked on.

God closed the door and let out a heavy sigh. “Gabriel,” he called. The short, plump man rushed in.

“Time?” said God.

“23 minutes and 12 seconds,” said Gabriel.

“Not bad,” said God. “Not bad at all.”

Gabriel noticed the broken glass on the floor. “I’ll clean that up.”

“No, that’s ok. I got it,” said God.

God turned and walked towards the two doors. Gabriel fidgeted nervously. He’d always been meaning to ask God something and now felt like as good a time as any to ask it.

“Why do you do this to them?”

“Do what?”

“Break them down? Build them up? The whole redemption speech? Make them choose if they’re going to Heaven and Hell?”

God squawked a laugh through his toucan beak as she opened the door to Hell. Gabriel rolled his eyes, knowing what was on the other side.

It was just a broom closet. Mops, dust pans, a trash can, and other cleaning supplies filled the shelves within. God took out the broom and dustpan and began sweeping up the broken glass.

“Why do you insist on making them think there’s a Hell?” asked Gabriel.

“It wouldn’t be fair of me to give them the ability to choose only to punish them if they chose wrong. They have to be able to redeem themselves, if for no one else than for their own personal well being. Imagine finding out there is only Heaven and no matter what you’re going there. Now imagine you had so much regret and self loathing from your life that you couldn’t enjoy the pleasantness around you. That’s the real Hell, if you ask me.”

God finished sweeping and emptied the dustpan into the trash can. He closed the door to Hell and moved on to his next appointment.

Kevin Froleiks is a New York based comedian. Follow him on twitter or check out his website to find out where he’s performing next. He is a writer for the UCB Maude Team, House of Birds. His comedy album, Jokes I Don’t Really Do Anymore, and the soundtrack to his musical, Great Frontier: A Poorly Researched Musical About Lewis And Clark, are both available on BandCamp.